The crypto advocacy group, the DeFi Education Fund, has called on the Trump administration to stop what it claims are the unfair and overreaching legal actions against open-source software developers, including Roman Storm.
In an Apr. 28 letter to the White House’s top crypto advisor, David Sacks, the group called on former President Donald Trump to discontinue what they described as the Biden administration’s Justice Department’s unfair efforts to treat open-source software development like a crime.
The letter specifically highlighted that prosecutors charged Storm in Aug. 2023 with allegedly laundering over $1 billion in cryptocurrency using Tornado Cash. The court set his trial for July. Meanwhile, his fellow co-founder, Roman Semenov, is still on the run and believed to be in Russia.
FinCEN vs. DOJ: DeFi innovation at risk
The DeFi Education Fund argued that in Storm’s case, the Department of Justice is trying to make software developers legally responsible for how people use their code. That’s not just absurd but also a dangerous move that could discourage innovation and development in the US crypto space.
The group also urged that the prosecution conflicts with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), issued during Trump’s first term. That guidance clearly stated that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols aren’t money transmitters.
In January, a federal court in Texas decided that the Treasury exceeded its power by sanctioning Tornado Cash. Following the ruling, the group thanked Trump for backing the industry and for his ambition to make America the “crypto capital of the world.”
They also pointed out that his goal can’t be achieved if developers face legal action for creating tools that support the technology. Variant Fund Chief Legal Officer, Jake Chervinsky, stated that the Justice Department’s case against Storm is just an outdated leftover from the Biden administration’s crackdown on crypto.
There is no justification in law or policy for prosecuting software developers for launching non-custodial smart contract protocols.
As of now, the petition has attracted 232 signatures from key industry figures, including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, and Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, to name a few.
